What’s inside this VP of Engineering Candidate Interview Questions Template:

1 🛠 Process

What are the candidate’s optimization skills? Do they experiment with the development process? Will they be a champion of the customer?

• Describe the development process at your last company. What would you try again and why? What would you not try again and why not?
• What have you changed your mind about when it comes to the development process or engineering team practices?
• On larger teams, how do you get a sense of what’s working and not working?
• Describe a time when you felt your team wasn’t shipping frequently enough. What did you do about it?

2 👥 People

What are their experiences building and leading teams? Do they invest in their people?

• Tell me about a superstar you’ve worked with. Would you work with or hire X again? Why or why not?
• Do you keep in touch with your previous teams? Why or why not?
• What’s a small example of how you try to show up for the people on your team? What’s an example where you realized you could maybe be doing a better job here?
• Do you do regular 1:1s with your team? Why or why not?

3 💻 Technology

Do they have technicalities? Are they able to deep dive into issues?

• Do you still code? Why or why not?
• What technology have you recommended in the past that you no longer recommend?
• What are some ways you get included in the “information flow” of teams?
• Give me an example of how you dig deeper into a project your team is tackling. Are there certain questions you like to ask, or approaches you’ve found to be effective here? 

4 ❓Questions

Does the candidate have any questions for you? Or are there questions from other interviewers?

5 ✅ Action Items

What came out of this meeting? What are your next steps?